HOW TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY: A Woman's Guide to Investing
By
About the piggiest thing that can be said about women -- aside from jokes about their rotten driving -- is that they don't know dollars from doughnuts about money; they can't even balance a checkbook, for gosh sake. Of course that was never strictly true and in these days of Liberation the view simply won't wash: any intelligent woman ""who can raise children and run a successful home,"" says Ms. Fowler, ""can also learn to operate profitably in the investment world,"" and if you don't believe it, she'll tell you why. And how, in this practical, thoughtful, direct (""Let me put it more bluntly in a way that you as a woman probably can understand better than most men"" is typical of the tone and approach) introduction to the sometimes baffling language and even more esoteric workings of the market -- how to evaluate stock performance, what the broker can and cannot do for you, the dynamics of the investment club, the relative merits of the analyst and his literature, planning a balanced portfolio (Fowler warns against being bullied into ""superconservative"" issues by the ""prudent"" man -- she's quite enthusiastic for go-go growth stocks), exactly who this ""shadowy man named Dow"" is and how he operates. For the Ms. with everything -- except a fair share of the dividends.